Alliance Airlines are the 3rd largest airline in Australia, and is recognised as the leading FIFO provider nationally. They employ around 500 staff, and have a national presence with offices around the country.
While regular customers understood their offering to the resources market, the airline was less known for their ability to offer ad hoc aircraft charters, as well as their leasing services.
The Alliance Airlines website was dated and did not display the range of services that they offered. Additionally, there was no opportunity for them to promote their services, special events, or incorporate online marketing.
Three firms were approached to create a new design and overall website structure, and WhiteSpace Marketing won the pitch.
The challenge was to maintain the brand equity, which was considerable, while creating a style and structure to appeal to new markets. Additionally, the industry specific booking engine software was to be incorporated in a seamless way so that existing customers would easily be able to adapt, and new consumers could be quickly educated on how to navigate the site. WhiteSpace was required to work together with Vedaleon, who was responsible for the effective rollout of the software within the new website framework.
We recommended the following approach:
- Simplification. Of everything possible.
- Reduction of buttons to be icon based – as users, we have learnt to identify with icons faster than words
- Lots of white space (see what we did there…)
- Copy and text to be less technical, and more benefit driven
- New, authentic photos of the aircraft
- Use of inspirational and aspirational banner imagery
- Retaining the booking engine function to sit over the banner, so the image could shine, and people could still access their booking information
Being such a technical industry, WhiteSpace interviewed the senior management to discover the stories of Alliance – what makes it tick, why they are different, what they can offer to their customers. We created copy which relates to the customer, retaining the link to technical accuracy, yet still connecting with the user.
WhiteSpace initially simplified the navigation process to result in a small number of ‘consumer’ buttons (eg Book Now, Find a Flight, Enquire Now) and the remainder of tabs being smaller and separate (About Us, Our History etc).
The booking functionality was designed to sit over the large banner images, which could be used to promote recent events, upcoming activities. This makes it easy for the user to navigate their way around the site, finding whatever they are looking for – be it FIFO information, ad hoc charter details, or even what sorts of groups have recently travelled with Alliance.
Today’s site overall is a simple, user friendly, professional website which appeals to all market segments for this iconic Australian Airline. This is a large website, and it was imperative to retain a consistent feel across the entire site, keeping elements to a minimum while always, always keeping the user in mind.
Clean design? Tick.
Incorporating functionality? Tick.
Simple Intuitive Navigation? Tick.
This is a business we really got to know, so we could bring it to life on your screen.
If you are looking for a web partner who brings these skills to the table for YOUR business, then get in touch.
